


At Idyll's End

by StarlightAsteria



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bran and Jaime take a road trip, Casino Royale AU, F/M, Grief, Jaime as Bond, James Bond AU, Romance, Sansa as Vesper, Thriller
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2020-12-09 18:20:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20999243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightAsteria/pseuds/StarlightAsteria
Summary: More than anything else, more than dangerous, she is unforgettable.Jaime/Sansa Casino Royale AU.





	1. JAIME LANNISTER I

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! Welcome to this short story. I hope you enjoy it! This is the first time I've written something in the thriller genre, so I hope it works. 
> 
> Birdebee and I have been throwing around ideas for this for a while now, and I'm so excited that this is now at a stage where I can post it!
> 
> Any dialogue you recognise is from the Casino Royale film. 
> 
> music suggestion: Gidon Kremer's performance of Astor Piazzolla's "Oblivion". 
> 
> Do let me know what you think of the chapter!
> 
> I'm also on Tumblr @starlightasteria :)
> 
> xxx

* * *

PART ONE 

* * *

JAIME LANNISTER 

_Present day King’s Landing, four hundred and fifty-five days after Lannisport_

Jaime finds himself standing in an office he had hoped never to set foot in ever again. There is a pink glass rose paperweight upon the desk. He hates that fucking paperweight. And on the other side of the desk sits a tiny, white-haired woman that he also never wishes to see or speak to ever again. His superior. The appeals to what he had previously enjoyed about his work fall upon deaf ears. So too, does a substantial pay rise. Not even the threat of a falsified psychological evaluation that would be a permanent black mark against his name, and prevent him from ever acquiring a job in the civilian sector - nothing sways him. He is determined; he will not return to active service. At the age of thirty-eight he is retired from this most dangerous of occupations. If not happily retired - he has not had a reason for happiness in all of these four hundred and fifty-five days - he is bull-headedly, stubbornly retired. Out of disgust. Out of exhaustion. Out of grief. 

The woman, like an ugly grey cormorant, ignores him, ignores his protests, and continues on blithely, explaining his next assignment. He doesn't care. He doesn't care about any of it. 

He is done with a life of shadows and deceit. 

All he wants is to return to his ancestral estate and there be left alone to lick his wounds. To be left alone to the crippling grief and guilt and fury that wakes him screaming and pleading, night after night. If only he had been faster. Stronger. He could have been in time. The water - he could have - he could have saved - 

He shies away from the thought like a child away from a hot stove after being burnt on the finger. 

The woman in front of him is still speaking, though he can't make out the words. His head is ringing. He nods, though to what he isn't precisely certain. And then the glass doors slide open to reveal a young man, early twenties and straight out of university if Jaime has to guess, with blue eyes and close cropped dark brown hair. He handles his wheelchair with the assurance of a person long accustomed to it. 

His superior smirks. "Lannister, meet our new quartermaster. Q will brief you on your gadgets." 

_Fuck, _Jaime thinks. 

He waits until he's descended a ridiculous amount of storeys in the lift down to the research labs, attempting without success to find a way of untangling himself from this situation, to drawl his question. "I never caught your name, Q. Seems a bit unfair, seeing as you know mine." 

The younger man looks at him with solemn eyes. "Bran Stark." 

_Stark? Bran Stark? _He reels. He can see the resemblance now, and it's a dagger to the heart. The hair is darker, but the structure of the face is the same. "I - knew - your sister." He speaks before being aware of having spoken. 

Bran Stark's stoicism shatters like a mirror. "Which one?" he chokes. "My sisters have been missing for years." 

"Sansa." Her name burns his throat, smoke and salt and tears and a lagoon at midday. "I knew Sansa." 

"When? _How? _Where?" 

"Four hundred and eighty days ago. On a train to Braavos." 

If Bran Stark finds Jaime’s precision in the matter strange, he does not let it show. Instead, his eyes narrow as he focuses instead on another aspect of Jaime’s reply. "You said you _knew _her?" 

"I did." 

"What does that mean, Lannister? I haven't heard anything about her whereabouts for _years. _Not since the death of our parents, and you're telling me you've seen her? That she's alive?" 

"She - she's not." 

"Not what?" 

"Alive." 

"You're joking." 

"I'm not." _She died in front of me. She was dead when they lifted her from the water. I tried - I couldn't - I tried - _

"Then who has been using her Winterfell trust fund for the past months?" 

* * *

_Meereen, forty days before Lannisport_

"Take your hand _away _from your ear, Snow," Jaime hisses. 

"What?" His - well, partner is putting things generously: as Jaime is fast learning, the man is utterly and truly a hapless moron of the first order - fellow agent replies, bending his head, making it vividly obvious to anyone with a mind that he is wearing an earpiece. 

"Take your hand away from your ear," Jaime repeats, clipping his vowels coldly. "Now, Snow!" 

"What?" Snow shouts. 

Jaime only has time to swear silently before their quarry spots Snow blatantly _not _cheering on the cobra fight as everyone else around him is. Jaime inches closer, his plan shot to hell. The man he is tracking - young, bald, and wearing a dark leather jacket - spots Snow, draws a pistol, fires into the air, and in the chaos of the screaming crowd, sprints off. 

Jaime pursues, taking vicious satisfaction in punctuating every footfall with a variation of _fuck-fuck-fuck-damn you-fuck you Jon Snow-fuck-fuck-fuck. _He's in good shape, but the man he is currently pursuing is fast, with a penchant for leaping over walls as if they were hurdles at a primary school athletics competition, barely knee-height. Jaime does not possess either the same skill or fascination, and so must go around the walls like any other person might. This, of course, has the consequence of making him lose ground. Coming up to a building site in full swing, he swears to himself again, commandeers a digger, floors it, getting the machine painfully up to the ridiculous speed of thirty miles an hour, and leaving a cloud of red dust in his wake. All too soon, the digger proves useless in the pursuit of a man through a half-built concrete skeleton, so Jaime launches himself from the driving seat and continues his chase on foot up through the building. 

He had not envisaged ending his afternoon on the top of a crane trading blows with a man who works as bomber-in-residence for a terrorist organisation, but needs must. 

* * *

_King’s Landing, the present day. _

Jaime watches, bemused, as Bran Stark downs cups of coffee like vodka shots and his hands fly over the keys, blue text appearing in great swathes upon the clear glass screens. This continues for some time, until, in the manner of great scientists, Bran Stark suddenly cries out, “Eureka! I have it.”

“What, exactly?” Jaime queries, pushing himself off the edge of the table he has been leaning against, and coming closer so he, too, can read the screens, not that the long lines of code mean anything to him.

“There - I managed to trace the provenance of the Winterfell trust funds. They’re being topped up by a shadow fund.” His eyes widen. “A shadow fund set up in the event of my parents’ death - no - in the event of their _assassination._” Jaime watches the younger man’s fists clench. “It wasn’t an accident. We all thought it was an accident, but it wasn’t. Someone wanted them dead.”

“Can you trace the account?”

“Can fish swim?” Bran Stark responds dryly. And then, a moment later, he continues, tapping at his keyboard. “It’s registered to a company. _Mockingbird. _I don’t know it.”

“Oh, I do,” Jaime growls. “It’s a corporation, a front for money laundering.”

“A fraudster?”

“Far worse. It’s run by a man named Petyr Baelish, alias Littlefinger, alias private banker to the world’s terrorists.”

“You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Fuck. He was my mother’s best friend.”

“So _that’s _why she was so spooked by him in Braavos.” It all makes sense to Jaime now. It all makes sense.

“I don’t follow.”

“The mission your sister accompanied me on; it was to trap Petyr Baelish. I thought the way he looked at her was the way he looked at women in general, I thought she was tense because she was outside her comfort zone.”

“My mother refused to see it, but from the time Sansa was eleven or twelve, she made very sure to never be in the same room as him. And never alone.” 

* * *

_On a train to Braavos, twenty-five days before Lannisport_

When he is told that his government is sending a diplomat to accompany him on this mission; a woman, a companion, posing as his fiancée to give his cover story a veneer of the ordinary, he nods impassively, but inwardly sighs in frustration. He has no time for some stickler for the rules questioning his every move, and wonders how dowdy the diplomat is going to be - someone young, bland, whose only redeeming feature is the ability to speak a ridiculous amount of languages, the ability to nagivate society as a hostess, in all likelihood. Jaime can see it already. Not only will he have to contend with this man Baelish, private banker to the world’s terrorists and notorious poker player, but he’ll be bored out of his mind by his companion, clutching her pearls at every sentence that comes out of his mouth.

So he finds himself on a train, in the first class dining carriage of an evening, waiting for this diplomat to show up. He entertains himself - the menu takes him all of five seconds to peruse - by thinking how flat her shoes are going to be. Sensible pleather lace-ups, he concludes, after discarding stilettos, loafers and boots in quick succession. Even a dowdy diplomat in knitted granny cardigans wouldn’t wear wellies in a dining carriage - at least he hopes not.

“I’m the money.” The seat opposite him is suddenly taken by the diplomat he has been waiting for. He blinks, freezing, forcing his features into pleasant neutrality, and looks up from his menu.

“Every penny of it,” he replies with a vague approximation of his usual, suave drawl, resisting the sudden urge to down his whisky. He’d been right about the diplomat being young, but utterly wrong about the rest of it.

She’s sharp, he can see that instantly. In her sunset eyes there’s a gleam of wicked intelligence, and he finds himself intrigued in spite of his reservations. She’s absolutely beautiful, as well: pale skin, glorious red hair, balletic, elegant. The kind of woman who can elevate a boring, monochrome office dress code with exquisite tailoring and luxurious materials to something nothing short of mesmerising.

They order their food, they dine, they speak about gambling, she mocks his plan, that wicked glint in her eyes making him want to hang the rest of the world and ravish her where she sits, and he can’t remember the last time he’s had this much fun. He’s never met a woman before who hasn’t been able to keep up with him, who takes his quips as a challenge instead of a deterrent, and he finds himself equal parts stunned, bewildered, aroused, and determined not to let her get the best of him.

“And you’re good at reading people?”

“I am,” he replies offhandedly, setting the bottle of wine back down again. Their words might be carefully modulated, but they can’t take their eyes off each other, and he settles into this intensely restrained foreplay with a smirk and a curl of his tongue.

“And what have you concluded?” She says, a well-mannered challenge that tells him she’s enjoying this as much as he is.

“About you, my lady?”

She hums, and he takes her invitation. “Your beauty is a problem. You worry you won’t be taken seriously.”

“Which one can say about of any attractive woman with half a brain,” she rebuts, almost dismissively, as though to say _surely you can do better than that, Mr Lannister._

“True,” he admits. “But in this case the sharp tailoring, the unconcealed intelligence, the… slightly prickly demeanour. Some men might find that intimidating.”

“But not you, Mr Lannister.”

“No, not me.” He considers her, the controlled, even gaze she casts upon him. “It could be ascribed simply to arrogance, but not you.” He pauses. “You don’t _want _men to come near you, and if you have to endure being called an ice queen or worse, then that is a price you are willing to pay. Unless I am much mistaken, and I don’t believe I am, you were badly hurt.”

Her fingers tremble around the stem of her wine glass, her only sign of disquiet.

Because he is Jaime Lannister, he can’t resist. What an intriguing, amusing puzzle of a woman she is. In a gentler tone, he continues: “Who was he?”

“A fool, a spoilt boy,” she replies sharply. “And you are many things, Mr Lannister, but you are not a fool. The secret service is a young man’s game, and yet, here you are.” She pauses, and he senses she is going to repay the favour in the form of her own analysis of him. He finds himself deeply curious about what she will say. “From the cut of your suit, you were given the finest education, and you naturally think everyone dresses like that. You’re comfortable, but at the same time you wear the garment with such disdain. You consider yourself your own man, and have done so for a long time. The question is why? Normally I would have said _issues with authority, teenage rebellion, _that kind of prosaic thing - but in this case, considering who your parents were, such powerful and public figures, and how they died in that helicopter crash, I’m going to go with isolation from your peers. I imagine your guardian, subsequently, was either distant or overly controlling and protective or both, and you have ever chafed against that.”

He smirks, but remains silent, marvelling despite himself at the elegant, incisive turns of her mind. He should feel humiliated at being stripped bare. Instead he finds himself entertained, and more sexually frustrated now than at the beginning of the meal, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t find that incredibly bewildering, even confounding. He doesn’t understand it.

“Now,” she continues, “having just met you I would not go so far as calling you a cold-hearted bastard - ”

“No, of course not,” he interjects mildly.

“But it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine,” she continues, certainty dripping like honey from her tongue. “You think of women as disposable pleasures rather than meaningful pursuits. So as charming as you are, Mr Lannister, I will be keeping my eyes on our government’s money and off your perfectly formed arse.”

“You noticed?” It is all he can manage to say. He’s never been so turned around before.

And there’s that damned, dangerous, alluring glint in her eyes again. “Even diplomats have imagination. Good night, Mr Lannister.” She stands, and reflexively, he stands too. His mother might have died when he was thirteen but he does remember the manners she taught him.

“Good night, my lady.”

She smiles blandly in response, and then glides down the carriage, unruffled. He is left staring after her in amazement.

He cannot lie to himself.

She might be confounding and infuriating and beautiful and clever and dangerous - he’s a spy, he damn well knows the signs, but he thinks the lady might be dangerous in a way he has never known another woman to be. She’s not dangerous to his job. She is dangerous to him.

More than anything else, more than dangerous, she is unforgettable.

* * *

_King’s Landing, the present day_

“So,” Jaime asks, reeling. “What now? What do we do? Where do we go?”

“The only place we can go,” Bran Stark replies evenly. “Winterfell.”

* * *

_Braavos, twenty-four days before Lannisport_

She is angry with him, that much is obvious, just having taken him to task with flashing eyes for what she views as his recklessness. And so he finds he has no rebuttal as she closes the lift doors on him with a curt, “Take the next one. There isn’t enough space for both me and your ego.”

* * *

_On the train north to Winterfell, the present day_

Jaime hates aeroplanes and Bran Stark cannot abide cars, so the two men take the scenic, two-day sleeper train up to Winterfell, having booked first class cabins so they can be comfortable, and hold their discussions privately. Jaime watches as the other man deploys from a hidden compartment in his wheelchair a little flying robot, that Jaime quickly learns is a device of Bran Stark’s own invention, to sweep the stateroom free of bugs and any other tracking or listening devices their erstwhile boss might have slipped into luggage or even the train carriage itself.

As the skyscrapers of the capital give way first to leafy suburbs and then to flat, open countryside, to quiet green fields in the light of the sun, Jaime settles back in the upholstered armchair to consider his companion with a sharp, even gaze.

“Why work for the intelligence services? What drew you towards the career of being Q?”

“The last time I saw my parents, I was fourteen years old. It was a Saturday, and my parents and Robb were driving to his sports game in time for the warm up, that kind of thing. The plan was for Sansa to drive us younger ones - me, Arya, Rickon, later, just for the match itself. My parents and Robb never turned up to the match, and their car was later found upside down in a ditch off the side of the road. Sansa tried to hold the family together after the funeral, with the help of our maternal great-uncle, Brynden. But Arya was the first to disappear. She was meant to get on a plane with Sansa back to King’s Landing for their studies, but she never got on the flight. To this day I’ve not had word of her. I stayed at Winterfell with my little brother Rickon and Brynden. And then came the fire. A gas explosion, the authorities later said. But Winterfell wasn’t run on gas; you don’t need to, not when the castle is built on hot springs, not when since it’s earliest inhabitation it has benefitted from a system of engineering wherein the steam and heat from the springs is piped through the walls to heat the structure. So that was the first… discrepancy. I don’t know how I survived. I shouldn’t have. I’ve been in a wheelchair since the age of seven. I should not be alive. My youngest brother died in the fire, and I assume my uncle too. I remember waking in a hospital bed. There was a calendar on the wall. For a date three months after what I remember from before the fire, and with a big picture of Highgarden in bloom. And at my bedside sat a little old lady I had never met before, but whom both of us know as the person in charge of the secret service, the person in whose office we met this morning. Or as she introduced herself to me then: Olenna Tyrell.”

“She’s a Tyrell?” Jaime snarls.

“I thought you knew.”

“No. No, I didn’t know. My father hated the Tyrells.” Jaime continues distantly, staring out of the windows. He snorts. “He called them jumped up farmers, who had the audacity to believe they could compete with House Lannister for government contracts.”

“My father thought similarly lowly of that family - but I thought it best to bide my time,” Bran replies evenly, with a grave, severe sort of determination. “To learn what skills I could to find my family in time. And the secret service was the best opportunity I had to try and find out what happened to them.”

* * *


	2. PART TWO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "With my sister - it wasn't merely a dalliance, then?" Bran Stark asks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Welcome to this next instalment! Thank you ever so much for your enthusiasm and encouragement, I truly appreciate it!
> 
> Any dialogue you recognise is from the Casino Royale film.
> 
> Enjoy, and until next time xx

* * *

PART TWO

* * *

_Braavos, twenty-two days before Lannisport_

There is a strange détente between Jaime and the lovely diplomat who shares the expansive two bedroom-suite with him, a crucial part of their charade against Littlefinger. It is bold of him to suggest she wear the dress he hangs upon her bathroom door, he knows that. But he has put more thought into this than is probably wise, and he is certain it would suit her. He’s observed her style in the few days they have been here, playing the rich couple that their family names would naturally make them. She prefers tailoring to colour, and structure to form. This dress is not precisely the antithesis of her preferences, but it is more daring, and he’s curious about her reaction. It is a rich burgundy silk, backless but for the thin pearl straps, cut to flatter and shape her every curve. He has also designed it himself, which makes this gambit more personal than it really should be.

“Will you wear this for me tonight?” He asks. He doesn’t expect her to respond, but their eyes meet for a moment in the mirror and her expressive mouth flicks into the barest hint of a smile, and he is - 

He walks back into his own bedroom, and blinks in surprise. Lying on his bed, next to his garment bag, is a second one, bearing the elaborate print of the most talented and expensive tailor in the city, co-incidentally the same one he’d gone to for Sansa’s gown. He laughs, and unzips the bag to reveal the dinner jacket, starched dress shirt and trousers. He swallows unsteadily. She must have selected every detail, because it’s the perfect blend of -

He’s walking back towards her bathroom before he really thinks about it, the metal hanger digging into his thumb.

“I have a dinner jacket.” It’s the only thing he can think of, holding up her gift to him. He’s bewildered and touched and - 

“There are dinner jackets and there are dinner jackets,” she says, unruffled. She continues with her mascara, before gesturing with a tilt of her head. “This is the latter.”

“It’s tailored,” he emphasises. “How did you - ”

Their eyes lock in the mirror once more, hers glittering with amusement. “I sized you up the moment we met.”

* * *

“Jaime?”

He spins around, adjusts his cufflinks.

She treads softly into his room, clad in a diaphanous silk dressing gown and slippers, her hair lustrous down her back, and he is mesmerised by the colour.

“I have something for you.” She’s tentative, almost shy, and he finds it immensely endearing.He’s honoured, too, by the intimacy of it.

“Something more than this rather wonderful suit you’ve put me in?” He drawls warmly.

“You wear it well,” she replies softly. “Better than - ” she cuts herself off, averting her eyes.

“Better than anyone else, you mean?” He laughs, delighted when she blushes scarlet. It is a better reaction than he could have hoped for. He wants her to find him handsome and attractive, he wants her to feel the same magnetism towards him as he feels for her.

“Oh, you are impossible!” She exclaims, grinning, finding her voice again, stepping closer to him so she can adjust his bowtie and he relishes having her so near to him.

“And you are more carefree, tonight,” he says unthinkingly. Her hands still on his shoulders, and he curses himself for a fool.

“You were right,” she says, so softly he almost doesn’t catch the words. “When you said I am an ice queen. But it’s not - it’s not because I - ”

He can’t bear to watch her struggle for words like this. He kisses her forehead, chastely. “I know.”

She takes a deep breath, and looks up at him, her soul in her eyes, and he could drown in the blue of them. He could drown willingly. “I know the stakes are high, very high, tonight. Quite literally,” she begins solemnly. “And I wanted to - to give you this. I know it’s only a silly old superstition, but - here. For luck.”

“Sansa, are you giving me your favour?” Warmth spreads through him at the thought.

“Yes, my lord.” The breath nearly leaves his lungs at her response. Her formality feels much more like an endearment, and he sees in her eyes the youthful hope she must have felt before the tragedies that befell her family when she was still a child. “Do - will you accept?”

“Gladly,” he says. “Wholeheartedly,” he continues, lifting her hand to his lips. With her other hand, she gives him what he quickly realises is a locket, gold, on a golden chain.

“This is the only piece of jewellery I have from before the fire at Winterfell.”

He stares at her in amazement. “Sansa, this is too much.”

She lifts her chin proudly. “It is mine to give to whom I wish.”

He swallows thickly. “I’m truly honoured.”

He dares trace her cheek.

* * *

She doesn’t wear the gown, though he cannot bring himself to feel disappointed. She’s wearing an elegant, demure sheath of icy blue silk, her long hair curled to perfection down her back, and every gaze in the room is turned to her as she makes her way around the table to stand behind him and kiss his cheek. The look in her eyes is defiant and shy all at once, and it is here, in a room full of strangers, where she knows she is meant to do and be nothing more than an adornment on his arm, that he sees firsthand just how accomplished she is at putting up a front. She finds this demeaning and unsettling enough without being more physically exposed, but none of these other men will ever know that. 

The alluring, gentle scent of her perfume dazes him, and the fall of her hair gives them enough privacy for him to murmur, his tongue thick and ungainly in his mouth, “You are a vision.”

“Thank you,” she replies, the tension fading from her face. “Your dress is beautiful, but I - ”

He smiles his understanding, softly touching her cheek. “Don’t worry.”

“Are we going to play, now?” They are rudely interrupted by none other than Littlefinger himself, who is glaring at them.

“Forgive me,” she says mildly, coldly. She’s tense again, and he wonders at it.

Jaime sees all too clearly the way his opponent tracks the Sansa’s every movement. It angers him, and he makes his first mistake.

* * *

Knowing the theory of what a bluff entails is one thing. Being caught on the receiving end is another thing entirely. More disconcerting still is Sansa’s worry, and during the first break they argue about his strategy, out on the front balcony of the hotel, the one that overlooks the carpark.

“I know how he thinks now,” Jaime explains harshly. “And I can beat him.”

She is too well-mannered to scoff. Instead she touches his neck, where he wears the locket she gave him under his shirt. They stand thus for a time, until she says softly, “I know you can. But only if you aren’t rash.”

* * *

A woman screams.

Jaime and Sansa freeze in the deserted corridor. A shadow moves in the corner of Jaime’s eye, and Jaime hurries the two of them into the alcove created by the recessed doors.

“Kiss me,” he mutters.

“What?”

“Just do it.” Jaime can hear slow, measured footsteps getting closer. Sansa looks up at him, and she must see the seriousness in his gaze because she winds herself softly around him, and her mouth opens under his with a languid sigh.Her lips are as soft as he has imagined them to be and he wants to lose himself in the sensation, but he’s straining to hear the -

The footsteps have stopped, but he can see the faintest shadow on the carpet. It moves, but Jaime is faster. He steps reluctantly but swiftly away from Sansa and snaps the man’s hand. The pistol goes off. Sansa jumps, and then both of them are running at full pelt down the stairwell, trying to get back into a public area. Jaime isn’t armed, so they’ve no choice.

He’s impressed Sansa is able to dash so rapidly down the stairs in stilettos and an evening gown, but the thought has no time to grow because this bodyguard seems intent on punching Jaime into the wall. Unsurprisingly, Jaime is ill-disposed to allow such a thing, and punches back.

* * *

He deals with the body, stuffing it into a cupboard, messaging the secret service contacts at the embassy, and heads silently back up to the suite. There’s a broken glass set down on the side table, stained with the dregs of red wine. Jaime advances cautiously. The lights are on. The shower is running but the door is open.

And his heart seizes as he catches sight of her, still in her beautiful gown, curled up on the shower floor, the water crashing over her head. He can’t see her face. Wordlessly, he takes off his shoes, socks, jacket and bow tie, and tentatively sits next to her. The water is bitingly cold.

“My hands don’t feel clean,” she murmurs. “I can’t get the blood off.”

“Your hands are clean,” he reassures her. She shakes her head wildly, turning so she is curled into his shoulder, clutching at his soaked shirt. He stills her hands with his, cupping them in his palms, making a show of examining them. Gently, deliberately, he draws each of her fingers into his mouth, one by one.

She stifles a sob.

“Your hands are clean,” he soothes her, and she collapses against his chest. He reaches up behind them to turn the temperature up, before wrapping his arm around her, and they sit silently on the floor, the water crashing over them, washing away the blood and the fear and the adrenaline.

* * *

_north to Winterfell, the present day_

“I was twelve when my parents died,” Jaime says, staring out of the window at the countryside, drenched in the red-gold light of the setting sun. “The helicopter crashed straight into the cliffs. It was an accident, but - ”

Bran Stark narrows his eyes. “You don’t think it was an accident.”

“No. My father was an experienced pilot. More pertinently, he would not have risked my mother’s safety for anything in the world.”

“That’s why you joined the secret service,” Bran surmises, leaning forward in a gesture so reminiscent of his sister that Jaime’s heart twists.

“I wanted to learn about sabotage, about industrial espionage,” Jaime elaborates, draining his glass. He hasn’t drunk a martini since Lannisport, and the taste is laden with memory. Far too laden with memory. But he can’t face a bottle of red wine in the dining carriage - or indeed any carriage - of a train ever again. “My uncle Gerion kept me away from the news and the police afterwards, but I do remember that my father was working on something important in the weeks leading up to his death. A crucially important deal. And someone else was against that. I don’t know who. I’ve never managed to find out. It’s a suspicion I have. And as a general rule my suspicions tend to be borne out correctly,” Jaime drawls, his voice turning harsh and cold.

“And then your uncle became your guardian.”

“Yes. He taught me about fast cars and watches and champagnes and suits. He didn’t really know what to do with me. It was rather an uneven education, or it would have been had my maternal grandfather Jason not intervened and hired tutors for me, though he was very frail at the time. My uncle Kevan was too busy trying to keep _Casterly _from going under entirely, and my aunt Genna lives in Lys with her string of much younger men.” Jaime raises an eyebrow at the younger man. He has a talent for loosening men’s tongues. “But you knew all of that already, quartermaster.”

“Most of it,” Bran Stark concurs mildly.

* * *

_Braavos, twenty two days before Lannisport_

She returns to watch the game just in time to watch him order another martini and exchange barbs with Baelish. She’s wearing his gown, and his mouth dries at the sight of her. He can’t take his eyes off her, and he sees her inhale sharply, lifting her chin, and he is proud of her courage. He’s also rather grateful he’s already sitting down, and he has some trouble concentrating on his cards. The rest of the table orders martinis as well, and it is petty but Jaime revels in Baelish’s annoyance.

They’re only half-way through the round when Baelish asks him snidely, “Is our game causing you to perspire, Mr. Lannister?”

A migraine suddenly comes crashing down on him, and he winces. There’s something smug about Baelish’s gaze, cool and cold as an eel, fixed upon Jaime’s martini.

Poison. Of course. How prosaic.

“Please excuse me for a moment, gentlemen, ladies,” Jaime says as he rises. It takes everything in him not to show any sign of the nausea now churning in his stomach. He strides quickly through the restaurant, sneakily palming a salt shaker and a glass, making for the nearest bathroom. Water, salt, drunk as quickly as possible, to make him vomit. It’s not pleasant, and it’s not nearly enough, he realises.

He needs his car. More to the point he needs what he knows he will find in the glove compartment of his front passenger seat. An antidote, and a defibrillator. 

* * *

_On the train north to Winterfell, present day_

“With my sister - it wasn’t merely a dalliance, then?” Bran Stark asks.

“No, it wasn’t.” Jaime swallows past the sudden lump of grief in his throat. “I wanted to marry her,” he admits shakily. He has not said the words aloud before, and they rasp his throat like glass. There is a ring, in the family safe at Casterly Rock. For her. That she never was able to wear it, that he was never able to give it to her - it is hers nonetheless. He designed it for her. He’d emailed the family jeweller just as the two of them left Braavos. She is the only woman who - “I resigned for her. The thought of returning to the Rock was bearable only because she would be there with me. I thought we might be able to make it a happier place again.”

* * *

_Braavos, twenty two days before Lannisport_

The first thing he sees is Sansa’s face, and he’s never been so glad to see anything in his life. He looks down at his chest and sees the defibrillator still attached.

“It wasn’t working,” Sansa says, jolting him from his thoughts. Her eyes are wet, he realises. “I tried but… I was afraid that - ”

“Thank you, Sansa,” he says softly, tangling her fingers with his, over his heart. “Thank you.” He wants to kiss her but he’s annoyed enough that the first time they kissed was because of a - well, it isn’t how he’d have liked to broach the subject with her. And he wants to be able to take his time with her.

The two of them cling to each other as she helps him stagger back to their suite to change, again. 

He returns to the game arm in arm with Sansa, to Baelish’s visible annoyance. He knows her well enough to realise that she will not be letting him out of her sight, and Jaime finds himself more comforted than he expects by the notion. He’s tired, he wants the game over and done with and he wants Baelish imprisoned for his crimes.

When the end comes, it’s as dramatic as these things often are, the First Sealord of Braavos offering Jaime his chips in a whispered conversation during the final break. An offering: cash in exchange for Baelish being taken in to Braavosi custody. The Iron Bank and the Sea Lords have very little tolerance for the sex trafficking and money laundering Littlefinger is guilty of, for slavery and slavers in any form are particularly abhorrent to the rulers and citizens of the Hidden City, descended as they are from slaves escaped from the Valyrian Freehold.

One by one, the other players fold, until it is just Jaime and Littlefinger.

A straight flush, and Jaime wins 115 million gold dragons, bankrupting Baelish of terrorists’ money in the process.

The clapping that accompanies the dealer’s announcement is rather desultory, Jaime thinks, though the candlelit celebratory dinner he shares with Sansa in a deserted restaurant, all white baroque panelling and parquet flooring, more than makes up for it.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thoughts? predictions?

**Author's Note:**

> thoughts? likes? dislikes? predictions?


End file.
